January 12, 2012 – 4:30 pm
Birds of a feather flock together in cyberspace.
At least that’s what Dr. Cuihua (Cindy) Shen, assistant professor of Emerging Media and Communication at University of Texas Dallas, has shown in a research article published in the journal First Monday.
Examining an online community using social network analysis, Shen tested the social drivers that shaped the collaboration dynamics among a group of users from SourceForge, the largest open source community on the Web.
Who Connects with Whom? A Social Network Analysis of an Online Open Source Software Community co-written by Peter Monge shows that users in online communities choose which users to interact with, and that their choices reveal the motivations and processes that create collective networks.
People often share stories, news, and information with the people around them. We forward online articles to our friends, share stories with our co-workers at the water cooler, and pass along rumors to our neighbors. Such social transmission has been going on for thousands of years, and the advent of social technologies like texting, Facebook, and other social media sites has only made it faster and easier to share content with others. But why is certain content shared more than others and what drives people to share?
Well, according to Jonah Berger, the author of a new study published in Psychological Science, the sharing of stories or information may be driven in part by arousal. When people are physiologically aroused, whether due to emotional stimuli or otherwise, the autonomic nervous is activated, which then boosts social transmission. Simply put, evoking certain emotions can help increase the chance a message is shared.
In the study, Berger, the Joseph G. Campbell Jr. Assistant Professor of Marketing at the University of Pennsylvania, suggests that feeling fearful, angry, or amused drives people to share news and information. These types of emotions are characterized by high arousal and action, as opposed to emotions like sadness or contentment, which are characterized by low arousal or inaction. He is also interested in how social transmission leads online content to become viral.
Wave and Buzz never amounted to much, but the new Google+ will be a force to be reckoned with. While downplaying the importance of their new service, it might be a game changer in the social sharing business for Google. It is much more than just sharing status and photos, it is a new way of communicating.
Google+ mainly consists of
• Circles – very similar to Facebook’s friends list, but you don’t need to sign up to be part of a circle.
• Sparks – a topical section where you define your own content.
• Hangouts – a place to meet up with your contacts without needing to schedule; video included.
• Mobile – what I like about the mobile component is the instant upload for photos.
• Huddle – a beter chat application
Another great “new” service from Google is Google Takeout, previously known as the Data Liberation Front. This service allows to export your data from Google products. It currently supports Buzz, Contacts, Picasa, your Google profile and some elements of Google+.
